Why Flintoff's vision of the future is just a rehash of the past

Andrew Flintoff thinks England players are falling behind because they are not playing in the IPL. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

This week it was Andrew Flintoff's turn to express his desire to join the Indian Premier League, his endorsement not so much ringing as sounding like a peal of Grandsire Doubles booming across the fields on All Saints' Day. Well, you can't blame him. He sees the England and Wales Cricket Board's prevarication on the so-called "window of opportunity" and wants to make sure the debate remains in the public domain. The reason Fred wants to go - cunningly skirting the bleedin' obvious - is that he reckons it is vital for the development of England one-day cricketers.

There may be an element of truth in this, but I feel that all the hype and talk has almost brainwashed the players into believing that as far as the honing of skills is concerned, there really is no alternative. They will, said Fred, learn all about yorkers and slower balls. You what? The secret of the game lies with the Rajasthan Royals?

Just to help those deluded enough to think that like sexual intercourse and Philip Larkin's 1963, cricket only began with the inauguration of the IPL, and that all skills and thinking prior to that were Neanderthal, here is a brief and by no means exclusive list of things that were around in the misty past ...

1. Yorkers Have players not heard of Ray Lindwall, Charlie Griffiths, or the Big Bird, Joel Garner? Have a look at footage of the 1979 World Cup final and marvel. You do not just decide to bowl a yorker and do so: it needs to be felt, as readily as a natural length. The change of length amounts to a third of a pitch. A top bowler should be able to shut his eyes and find a length. The same should apply to yorkers.

2. Slower balls A one-day staple, with increased variety and invention. But bowlers have always used them. Mine was crap, I admit, like Steve Harmison's, but even that has its moments. Three decades ago I was bowled out by Eddie Barlow with something that simply disappeared, while no one has ever bowled a more destructive slower ball than the Barbadian all-rounder Franklyn Stephenson.

3. Power hitting over the top Was it really just a dream watching Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana pulverising bowling at the top of the innings at 10 per over in the 1996 World Cup? New Zealand's Mark Greatbatch was doing it at the 1992 tournament. So what's new?

4. Exotic strokes In the 1960s Mushtaq Mohammed was flummoxing spinners with the reverse sweep; Mike Gatting used it in the 1987 World Cup, with disastrous effect. The switch hit? Kevin Pietersen might claim the patent but Martin Crowe, the great Kiwi batsman, was experimenting with it in the early 1980s, during his time on the MCC groundstaff. I maintain that the shot is not difficult - it is the left-hander's slog sweep and most lefties are actually right-handed. Try it without a bat: I guarantee it will feel more natural played as a left-hander with dominant top hand than the normal way round, with a dominant bottom hand. During last summer I saw Derek Randall, 57 years old, batting against a brisk schoolboy seamer, change hands and belt him over midwicket. The only difficulty, said Rags, was in getting into position. I went to school with a fellow who would face the bowler front on and flip the length ball straight over his own head. High-risk, maybe - it could have gone up his nose. He would be hailed a genius now.

5.Standing outside off to work the leg side It eliminates lbw. Anyone see Viv Richards play? Unique method but same principle. And don't forget that Brendon McCullum was wreaking havoc and Matthew Hayden was marching down the pitch to the seamers when the IPL was a twinkle in Lalit Modi's eye.

6. Hitting the yorker for six Personal experience here, although on the wrong end. In 1977, in a Sunday League match in Maidstone, the Pakistan batsman Asif Iqbal, on 94, faced the final ball of the innings from me. It pitched, dare I say it, perfectly in the blockhole, to hit middle and leg. Asif - whose top hand, at the tip of the handle, and bottom hand, down near the splice, worked on a lever principle - chipped it out and over the sightscreen to reach his hundred. Bats were not quite as they are now, either.

7. Clearing the front leg to hit big Isn't this the technique which has been employed by tailenders down the ages? A decade ago Steve Waugh was employing it to great effect.

None of this is meant to denigrate IPL cricket. Rather, it is to pose the question that if these skills and techniques have been in existence for years, why does Flintoff think that the IPL is the only place to develop them? What has he been doing all this time?

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